Sunday, January 27, 2008

Protect Our Coral


A Fragile Part of The Marine Environment

Last week, or perhaps 2 weeks ago, there was a program airing that caught my eye. I sat down to listen what the hosts/researchers were talking about. It was a one hour marine program with a large portion dedicated to the preservation and prevention of, the ongoing assault on "our coral reefs."

I call them "ours" because coral belongs to the ecosystem and our goal as men and women is to attempt the task of preserving this planet's important resources from those among us who - don't care - aren't informed - or profit by the use and subsequent destruction of vital elements of these resources.

Corals are actually little plant-like animals, which along with the skeletons of dead crustaceans and algae build themselves up into larger and more prolific colonies, which grow, using air / water to derive the energy to continue building up each coral critter into a much larger skeleton that eventually forms the structure of a reef.

The reef forms a barrier from storms, feeds thousands of species of fish who hunt small prey that use the reef for protection. There is 1/3 of our coral that has been killed off from global warming, increasing amounts of sediment, toxic chemicals, and a dozen or more reasons I can't recall. Coral only grows about 1 cm per annum which isn't much. One can easily see that the destruction of coral is rapidly outstripping it's ability to sustain itself and the coral continues to be eradicated. Just a diver poking about or standing on this coral can cause widespread damage on the reef and it's eventual death.

Coral reefs are often referred to as the oceans medicine chest or it's "rain forest". We must stop damaging and killing off our coral, as it may contain wonderful components that could lead to cures for various diseases - just as we have lost the ability to study plant life found solely in the rain forests - because we're cutting them down at breakneck speed for chopsticks and paper packaging for Asia and the rest of the world.

Next time you're diving a reef, keep in mind that you're a guest in a large underwater city. Don't go mucking things up by prying up bits of coral for a lame souvenir - help save the coral by behaving like a privileged guest. You may be saving the cures to disease that will assist generations to come, and at the very least you'll be saving these beautiful colonies for future divers to enjoy as well. Do some research of your own, this is just a quick post but there's volumes of detailed indepth information available, on what you can do to help save our coral!

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Hey Dad Let's Feed The Barracuda


Lighting Fast Predators - Not To Be Taken Lightly

I was able to watch some great footage yesterday on the Barracuda. Featuring the Big Boys of 4 to 5 ft long, mouth bristling with teeth and moving at attack speeds of 0 - 35 mph in the first sweep of their tails. Very impressive if I do say so myself.

There was a bit of background such as I shared above, but the highlights of the short airing, was an attack by a Barracuda of 5 feet in length on a lady who scrapes boat bottoms for a living. It turns out that it happened on a highly sunlit day where any movement by a knife or scraper blade shimmered like a prey fish. The lady in question was carrying a scraper with handle in hand and the blade giving off brilliant flashes of silver was it dangled beneath the diver.

It seems that she paused for a moment to scrape something when she felt a solid hit in the right shoulder and biceps area. Yup, it was our old friend the Barracuda, estimated at about 5 feet (she carried his stuffed body everywhere - beats scraping boats!). It happened so fast that she never knew what happened until after it was over. The giant fish, sensing immediately that she was not a prey item disengaged, but not until her adversary had slammed those formidable teeth into her arm at about 35 mph!

Now 35 mph didn't sound like it was that fast until some grizzled dive boat veteran got in the water and fed the schools of Barracuda that cruised in at their normal arrival time. This guy would shake small fish in the water and huge specimens - just suspended at a standstill would wheel, turn and take the fish from his fingers at such speed that they had passed him already before it sank in - just how fast these fish are - and proved that they are nothing to be taken lightly. Again and again it was repeated until I could make out the turn - the tail thrust and finally flashed past the man's fingers. I had to see this several times to believe it. I think it's that they reach top speed in one push of the tail that makes them so damn fast. The boat Captain who had laughed as he spun Barracuda yarns, mentioned that you have to be careful or they'll get a piece of you, got out after the dive and demonstration - only to display a torn up hand with several gaping wounds in it. Had to be the camera jitters ay? He proceed to rub his finger over what was left of his feeding hand, stopping every 1/2 inch or so to give an account of how he got nailed and moved along to the next scar. And here I was thinking he was just working the crowd up but he wasn't, he was just preparing us for the show we were about to see.

Best methods to avoid attack is to avoid shiny objects when they're around and about, avoid murky water where they are reported to hang out and not to dive in the dawn and dusk periods - also a no-no for avoiding shark attacks. For those who think that Barracuda are just some ferocious window dressing - guess again and unless you're very experienced around Barracuda - then get out of the water!

Saturday, January 5, 2008

The Great White Shark


This One Feels Like a Keeper!

The Great White shark is a streamlined swimming and ferocious predator with 3,000 teeth give or take, at any one time. The greatly feared shark has an enormous body, is built for blazing speed. It sports a pointed snout, a crescent-shaped tail, five gill slits, no fin spines, an anal fin, and three main fins: the dorsal fin and two pectoral fins. When the shark is near the surface, the dorsal fin and part of the tail are just visible above the water.Great White sharks average 12-16 feet long. The biggest great white shark on record was 23 feet long, weighing about 7,000 pounds. Females are larger than males and shark pups can be over 5 feet long at birth! Young Great Whites eat fish, rays, seals, birds and other sharks. Adults eat larger prey, like larger seals, sea lions, small whales. otters and sea turtles. They're carrion eaters and will make a meal of dead fish or animals, found floating in their paths. Great whites don't chew their food, they rip the prey into mouth-sized morsels, which are then swallowed whole.

Hot Spots for Great Whites include, but aren't limited to, the SO. African coastline, several Australian hot spots, Western Coastline of the USA and the Mediterranean as far North as the waters off Croatia. Recently a "tagged" Great White Shark took a swim from the Western coastline of the USA to HI - roughly 2000 miles. I wouldn't have wanted to be swimming in his route since he must have been one very hungry shark upon his arrival in HI.

Here's a link to a nice size shark swimming off of Molokini Island in about 20' of water. This shark photo was "cropped" for size but NO post processing was done to the original RAW image. I do get tempted at times to fire up Adobe PhotoShop and give it a "once over" - I'm sure there's a gem of a shot remaining after the green is neutralized. This was shot in an older model 3 MP Canon SureShot ,set on automatic through an ewa-marine waterproof digital camera case!